Getting Started with Social Explorer
- Connect to Social Explorer and Sign up for an Account to save maps, tables and projects.
- Login to your Account.
Note: Maps/Tables/Projects can be saved, exported, emailed, shared with collaborators, and embedded into a webpage.
Create a Table
- Connect to Social Explorer and Login to your Account.
- To access Data, click Tables.
- Select American Community Surveys (5-Year Estimates). Click the down arrow to the right. Select the ACS 2015-2019 (5-year Estimate). Click Begin Report.
- Select your Geography (suggest you start with Place - Utica). Under State, select New York. Then Utica city, New York.
- If you know the Census tracts for Utica, select Census Tracts instead.
- Click Add.
- Select your Variables. Notice you can search by Keyword. There is also a tab for Premade Reports.
- Click Add.
- Then click Show Results to view your report.
- Your table/report can be exported in a variety of formats.
For more help, please consult the Social Explorer Training Modules.
How to cite information on Social Explorer.
Make a Map
- Connect to Social Explorer and Login to your Account.
- From the dashboard, click Explore Maps. On the United States map click Explore.
- You should now have a map of population density of the United States by state.
- Watch the YouTube video.
Explore the Mapping Features and Options
- Zoom in on the map to your hometown. Select Auto Adjust (lower right corner) to normalize the data as you zoom in and out. To the right of Auto Adjust, click the ... to change the color palette.
- More options, in addition to geography and visualizations, are available in the upper left of the screen, under the 3-line horizontal hamburger menu.
- Choose your data and location. Explore features like Mask map data to isolate a geographic area, and the Calendar feature to see data changes over a period of time.
Create a Map
- Go back to the dashboard and click Explore Maps. On the United States map click Explore.
- You should now have a map of population density of the United States by state.
- Click Change data to map a different set of data
- A list of topics should appear. Choose your topic of interest. You may need to change the year of data to change from the default data source which is currently the American Community Survey 2024 (ACS).
- Once you've selected a data point, close out of the data choice panel. Your map should update.
- To view the data by county, select the drop down that says by State and change the Geography to County.
- Scroll to zoom in. Roll over a county to see data for that county.
- Refine your map's geography and visualization.
- Adjust the geographical level: By default, the map automatically shows data at different levels (e.g., state, county, or tract) depending on how far you are zoomed in. To change this manually, look for the "Change geography level" option in the map menu.
- Change visualization type: In the map menu, click "Change visualization type" to switch between display options. For example, use Shading for normalized measures like percentages and Bubbles or Dot Density for counts.
- Advanced tools are available such as Compare maps, Filter data, and the ability to upload and visualize your data.
- To Save or Export your map, click Save or Export.
- You can access all your saved projects under My Projects on the dashboard.
For more help, please consult the Social Explorer Training Modules.
How to cite information on Social Explorer.
